Emergence, Exclusion, and the Proper Subset of Powers Strategy [Book Symposium]
Issue: Issue 19 • Author/s: Karen Bennett
Topics: Metaphysics, Ontology
Wilson characterizes weak and strong emergence partly based on their differing solutions to the exclusion problem. The weak emergentist should claim that emergent phenomena and their bases can both cause the same effect without overdetermining it, because they literally share causal powers. I compare this strategy with a different but related strategy also available to the weak emergentist, and argue that the virtues of the former cost more than it appears.
Questioning, Rather Than Solving, the Problem of Higher-Level Causation [Book Symposium]
Issue: Issue 19 • Author/s: Erica Onnis
Topics: Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of science
In Metaphysical Emergence, Jessica Wilson recognises the problem of higher-level causation as “the most pressing challenge to taking the appearances of emergent structure as genuine” (2021: 39). Then, Wilson states that there are “two and only two strategies of response to this problem” (2021: 40) that lead to Strong and Weak emergence. In this paper, I suggest that there might be an alternative strategy—not opposite, but different in kind—to approach this difficulty. As noticed by Wilson, the problem of higher-level causation was formulated and made central by Jaegwon Kim. However,…